which fight do i need to watch of holmes that shows him in yalls opinion peak form.ive looked at a few of them and was impressed by his jab immediatly followed by his right hand.he didnt seem to be much of ko artist,though he did have the steam to go 12 to 15 rds.so what ive seen so far is that he has great stamina and eventually wears his opponents down.prime example of this would be the shavers fight in 79,shavers just was so tired the ref stooped the fight in the 11th and shavers had knocked the chocolate out of holmes midwaY through the fight with a RIGHT HAND which larry somehow recovered after the knockdown!

Larry himself has said that he felt his best for the ****ey fight, but for my money, his most impressive performances were Shavers I and Cobb.

At the time Larry defended against Tex, Cobb had lost very close split decision verdicts to Norton and Dokes. Mike Dokes was the consensus number two heavyweight in the world at that time. Holmes was supposedly becoming prone to running out of steam in the late rounds. Everybody knew that Larry would not be able to take Tex out. But how good would Holmes look throughout a 15 round war where his opponent was utterly impervious, and would never take a backwards step?

15 rounds later, Larry had proved his ridiculous superiority to the rest of the HW division at that stage. Where number two Dokes had to settle for a questionable split decision over Tex, Larry shut him out over all 15 rounds. Going into the championship stretch, Cobb attempted to step up the pace in the hope that Holmes would be wearing down. Instead, Larry accelerated his pace by that much more over Cobb, and could have been awarded some championship rounds by two points. Do yourself a favor though, and watch Holmes/Cobb with the volume off (so as to not have your perspective tainted by Cosell's obnoxious blather). Better yet, view Dokes/Cobb I before getting into Holmes/Cobb. Then you'll witness exactly what the degree of seperation was between number one and number two in the early 1980's. You can also check out his 15 round shutout over Berbick. Trevor simply wanted to stop Larry's HW title knockout streak at eight, so he kept low, and concentrated on backing Holmes up (much as Godoy did in his first match with Louis). Larry showed great legs and footwork against Tex.

Regarding Holmes's ability to recuperate rapidly from a heavy shot, he was walking on his feet eight seconds after the right hand from Shavers which put him down connected, and his knee came off the floor only four seconds after he sustained the knockdown punch from Snipes and again, he was walking unassisted only eight seconds after Snipes connected. (This is a very far cry from Lennox Lewis leaning on the referee.) Keep in mind that the actual time Larry spent on the deck was much less than this. I'm giving the interval between these punches connecting and when Larry was back on his feet and walking again under his own power.

As fast and well-conditioned as Snipes was, and with the full sized heavyweight reach that he had, Renaldo still lost the remaining 2:37 seconds of that seventh round, even though he raced across the ring to try finishing Larry off as soon as the standing eight count was completed. Tyson would have had a lot of fun trying to reach and finish off a peak Holmes with his measly 71 inch reach!